This Week’s Health IT Business News
Its St. Patrick’s Day and the luck of the Irish is smiling on the stock market these days with the Dow keeping near or above 14,500, surpassing the lofty heights not seen since October of 2007. and the NASDAQ inching above the 2,800 mark. Stock research company Zacks.com on Tuesday discussed Allscripts and the health IT/EHR market in its Analyst Blog writing “the health care information technology market is competitive and price sensitive. However, optimism about the growth prospects of select HCIT service providers remains favorable under the Obama administration.” Will the health IT market continue its bullish ways?
Mergers and Acquisitions
On Tuesday athenahealth announced its completion of the acquisition of Epocrates, signaling the company’s move into the mobile app space.From the company’s press release:  By leveraging Epocrates’ mobile expertise with knowledge and data from athenahealth’s cloud-based network, the combined company is uniquely positioned to introduce new mobile workflows and applications to fuel the delivery of high-value information to the clinical community when, where, and how they want it. Additionally, this acquisition accelerates athenahealth’s access to the clinician market, growing its current provider base of 40,000 to include the more than one million clinicians on the Epocrates network.
Partnerships
Oklahoma’s largest health system, INTEGRIS Health, will partner with Phytel to integrate their population health and care management tools as part of INTEGRIS Health’s goals set by a $20 million Medicare Innovation grant. According to the news release, the partnership marks INTEGRIS’ “latest effort to adjust to the emerging value-based system of health, which rewards providers commensurate with the quality of care they deliver” and to “enhance the capabilities offered by their electronic health record (EHR).” The addition will also help INTEGRIS speed deployment of its patient centered medical home (PCMH) model.
Physicians Interactive, a provider of online and mobile clinical resources and solutions for clinicians, announced its partnership with Regis College and Partners In Health to improve healthcare in underserved regions of Haiti. The program will employ the services of Health eVillages, a program of Physicians Interactive and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights which delivers critical healthcare information via mobile technology to clinicians practicing in challenging environments around the world.The Health eVillages Regis College Outreach (“HERO”) program will sponsor two coordinators, one from Regis College and one from Haiti, providing them with the means and tools needed to help elevate the quality of care in the area around Hinche, a city in central Haiti. The effort will help aid Haiti, a country still recovering from the January, 2010 earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, killing a quarter of a million.
Product Development
Cloud-based EHR vendor 4medica announced this week the release of the “industry’s  first Master Patient Index (MPI) engine based on big data technologies.” According to the news release, the 4medica Big Data MPI “increases precision by applying innovative technologies, while reducing duplication in patient information and scaling for the big data engendered by today’s ACOs and HIEs.”
The mHealth Alliance released a new report this week that gives an overview of the current state of standards and interoperability in low-and-middle-income countries. The report offers key recommendations for the mobile health community to undertake in order to achieve progress on interoperability. The report makes clear that health systems in “both developed and developing countries continue to struggle to realize the full potential of mhealth, and more generally technology, in part due to limited interoperability.” Download a PDF of the report at: www.mhealthalliance.org
Contracts
Applied PilotFish Healthcare Integration, a provider of middleware solutions, announced this week that the State of Connecticut has commenced implementation of the PilotFish eiPortal to support reporting requirements for Stage 1 Meaningful Use testing efforts.According to the news release, the eiPortal, cloud-based app will provide “access to all the implementation resources required to build an interface along with a fully automated, self-service, interface testing and validation facility that will be configured for reporting requirements.”
Company Announcements
EHR company SuccessEHS announced it is one of the first ambulatory vendors to successfully move into production of health information exchange with South Carolina’s HIE (SCHIEx). SuccessEHS demonstrated a successful connection with SCHIEx in 2012, and has now completed the onboarding process. The connection with SCHIEx allows SuccessEHS clients and their patients to benefit from advanced HIE, and also enables SuccessEHS clients to submit data to the South Carolina Immunization Registry.
iMedicor announced it has installed its interoperable health information exchange and social network platforms, complete with the company’s recently acquired iPenMD electronic health records system, at Greenville Technical College in Greenville, South Carolina.
EHR and PM software company e-MDs announced the expansion of its value-added reseller (VAR) channel with the addition of Alesco Medical, a consulting firm that provides business and technology services to medical groups and clinics as a Channel Distributor.
Personnel
HIT technology company Arcadia Solutions announced the appointment of Sean Carroll as CEO, effective April 1. Carroll joins Arcadia from Nuance Communications where he served as Senior VP of Health Information Management.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), has named Leslie Kelly Hall as Chair of the Consumer Technology Workgroup for the Health Information Technology Standards Committee. Hall is Senior VP of policy for Healthwise, a non-profit organization that provides health content, technology and services. She brings her 30 years of experience in the health care field to the position.
Clinical communications technology company Voalte announced the company is expanding its executive management team. Voalte’s founder Trey Lauderdale was elevated to the position of President. The company is also adding four experienced specialist to its executive management team.